Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now? Image – latimesblogs.latimes.com It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.
So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. Schmidt’s book is not about communicating with the public. “Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. Google invests in big South African solar project.
Google is taking its strategy of investing millions of dollars into clean power projects in the U.S. and focusing it on Africa for the first time.
On Thursday, the search engine giant announced that it’s invested $12 million into a large — 96 MW — solar panel farm in South Africa. When built, the solar project, called Jasper Power Project, will be able to deliver enough clean power for the equivalent of 30,000 South African homes and will be built in the Northern Cape province near the town of Kimberly. California-based solar developer SolarReserve is working with South African clean power companies Intikon Energy and Kensani Group to build the project. The Jasper solar farm will cost $260 million, and the developers have closed on the financing, including other investments from Public Investment Corporation, Development Bank of South Africa and the PEACE Humansrus Trust. The same developer group was also able to raise $586 million for two other solar panel projects in South Africa. Schmidt van Google 'trots' op belastingontduiking. Google ontwijkt 2 miljard dollar aan belastingen binnen een jaar - via Nederland - Nieuws.
Dear Google: People Like You Because You're Not A Walled Garden; Please Don't Put Up Garden Walls. Wil Wheaton is getting some attention for highlighting what appears to be a pretty ridiculous trial balloon on the user interface design of YouTube: requiring users to be signed in to a Google+ account to up or down vote a YouTube video.
Now, it appears that this is just a test, but just the fact that Google is thinking about it seems like a bad idea. Wheaton makes the point pretty clearly: even though he's a regular Google Plus user, he knows that this will decrease overall engagement: Oh, go fuck yourself, Google. This is just as bad as companies forcing me to “like” something on Facebook before I can view whatever it is they want me to “like.”
Just let me thumbs up something, without forcing me to “upgrade” to G+, you dickheads. Google Buys Katango To Solve The Labor Of G+ Circles. Why Google cares if you use your real name. Google Plus – One Social Networking Tool to Rule Them All. Like I have mentioned yesterday, it’s been a few days already since I jumped the shark and joined the bunch of early adopters who have been hammering down, and taking for a spin, the latest iteration of Google to get social with Google Plus, right after Google Wave and Google Buzz.
And I guess the experience has been somewhat rather positive so far, because a few days later, I’m still there, having a blast. So since a bunch of folks have asked me to share my thoughts about the overall user experience I thought I would put together this particular blog entry where I could describe a little bit what it is like: well, to me, it’s like being all over 2007, once again! But let’s get started with things properly.
As most of you folks already know, my first exposure to social software was inside IBM, back in 2001, with a Profile Social Aggregator called Fringe; then I started experimenting with the instant messaging social capabilities of IBM Community Tools (a.k.a. Google I/O in a Nutshell: All the News You Might Have Missed. Google I/O 2011 has officially ended, so here's a quick "all killer, no filler" recap of everything you need to know that happened at the conference this year.
The event was full of announcements, including big pieces of Android news, updates on Google TV, announcements for the super-slick Chromebook, and perhaps most significant of all, the official launch of Google Music. And it wasn't all consumer app news. Google Teams Up With Twitter And SayNow To Bring Tweeting-By-Phone To Egypt. $10 million for Project 10^100 winners. (Cross-posted from The Official Google Blog) Two years ago today, we began Project 10^100 by asking you to share your ideas for changing the world by helping as many people as possible.
Your spirit and participation surpassed even our most optimistic expectations. People from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 ideas. We selected 16 big ideas and asked the public to vote for their favorites. The five ideas that received the most votes are the winners of Project 10^100. Idea: Make educational content available online for freeProject funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos.
Idea: Enhance science and engineering educationProject funded: FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition. Here’s a short video celebrating the inspiring work of these organizations: Google Apps highlights – 9/24/2010. This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks.
Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed. This week, our updates include a better Gmail experience for Android devices, an option for businesses and schools to strengthen their security, and dozens of new applications for customers from third-party developers and from all across Google. We also reached a big new milestone: more than 3 million businesses are now using Google Apps! Updated Gmail app for AndroidOn Tuesday we rolled out an improved Gmail app for Android devices, now available in the Android Market for devices running Froyo (Android version 2.2). The new Gmail app keeps the most common actions like replying and starring handy at the top of the screen, even if you scroll down through a long message. Google's Internal Security Breach Raises Questions About Trust and the Cloud - ReadWriteCloud. Gawker reported earlier this week that David Barksdale, a 27-year-old Google engineer used his internal clearances to access users' accounts, including the information of four minors.
"It's unclear how widespread Barksdale's abuses were," says Gawker, "but in at least four cases, Barksdale spied on minors' Google accounts without their consent, according to a source close to the incidents. In an incident this spring involving a 15-year-old boy who he'd befriended, Barksdale tapped into call logs from Google Voice, Google's Internet phone service, after the boy refused to tell him the name of his new girlfriend, according to our source. After accessing the kid's account to retrieve her name and phone number, Barksdale then taunted the boy and threatened to call her.
" A Question of Trust Google has confirmed the story and has fired Barksdale, but won't discuss the case in detail. What Oversights Are in Place? On one hand, these sorts of incidents can happen anywhere. Trying to Be Something You’re Not: Works for Drag Queens, not for Google. Contrary to popular opinion, the reason Yahoo’s metrics have been stagnant and its stock has lost half its value in the last two-and-a-half years isn’t because Google did search better than Yahoo.
It’s because Yahoo turned its back on what it did well: Building the first online mass media content superstore. In doing so, it let the younger, sexier, faster-growing Google define what Yahoo wasn’t. It’s precisely the mistake that Jeff Bezos and Amazon didn’t make when eBay was the ecommerce, monkeys-could-run-this-train darling. Yahoo was never going to win at search, just like Amazon never would have won at auctions. It wasn’t in the company’s DNA.
Newscorp. Reputatie. Google Deals A Blow To Anti-Scientology: Anonymous’ AdSense Acc.